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(Giornale di Sicilia) Trafficking in migrants, Eritrean extradited to Palermo: I am not the head of traffickers

Posted by: Semere Asmelash

Date: Monday, 02 July 2018

THE PROCESS

Trafficking in migrants, Eritrean extradited to Palermo: I am not the head of traffickers

02 July 2018

Mered Yehdego Medhane at the time of arrest

"My name is Medhanie Tesfamariam Behre and I am not a trafficker of men. It has nothing to do with the traffic of migrants. I was arrested and tortured for twenty days by the Sudan police, but I have nothing to do with this story. I am a migrant like others ". The accused was accused of having managed the trafficking of migrants for years.

The man arrested in Sudan was identified with the name of Mered Medhanie Yedhego, but it could also be one of the many aliases that the trafficker nicknamed "the general" used.

The lawyers claim that their client, now under trial in the court of Assize in Palermo, is called Medhanie Tesfamariam Behre and is an Eritrean carpenter who was in Sudan to embark for Italy.

The boy has always maintained that there has been an exchange of person, but the magistrates are sure that it is the trafficker sought for years . Yehdego eritreo of 35 years, according to the magistrates has a large "criminal thickness" and for years would have been engaged in the "incessant activity in organizing travel by sea to the Sicilian coast".

The defense, supported by the lawyer Michele Calantropo, has deposited a report on the DNA of the son of the trafficker of men. The DNA of the two-and-a-half-year-old son, son of Lydia Tesfu Hannes and Medhanie Yehdego Mered, is not compatible with that of the young man who was imprisoned in May 2016.

"It is not him - says the lawyer Michele Calantropo, who in front of the Court of Assizes of Palermo defends the defendant - and moreover could not go differently because my client, as we say from the first day, is called Medhanie Tesfamariam Behre and he is not a trafficker ".

The power of attorney opposed the filing of the report because it is an act that should have been carried out in contradictory after a letter rogatory.

Calantropo does not think so that he reiterated that these are defensive investigations. The court reserved itself.